NC deportation case highlights child welfare maze

RALEIGH, N.C. — When immigration agents deported Felipe Montes to Mexico two years ago, his three young sons were left in the care of their mentally ill, American-born mother in a small North Carolina mountain town. Despite immigration policies that allow for the release of primary caregivers, federal authorities worked swiftly to expel Montes. Within two weeks, social workers placed the boys in foster care.

Child welfare officials are now asking a judge to strip Montes of his parental rights, reasoning it’s better for the children to live with strangers in the country where they were born than with their father in Mexico. Such a ruling could clear the way for their adoption.That would be unfathomable to Montes, whose only brushes with the law were a string of traffic violations.

“I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t use drugs,” said Montes, 32, who crossed the border illegally in 2003. “I have always taken care of my children, I have always loved them. And now, the social services people want to take away my rights and give my children away to strangers.”

Montes’ lawyer says the father is at risk of being deemed an unfit parent solely because of his immigration status. Like thousands of deported parents whose children were taken in by the foster care system, Montes is barred from returning to visit his kids or attend court hearings on their future. He wants his boys to live with him in El Encino, a small village in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, but county officials have declined to allow it. “I can’t see them. I can’t give them a hug. It’s very depressing,” Montes said by phone from Mexico.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say their intent is not to break up families, but there’s no system to allow detained parents to make decisions about their children or reunite with them. Legal experts say parents often lose custody solely due to immigration problems — and not abuse or neglect.

A 2011 report from the Applied Research Center, a New York-based racial justice think tank, found about 5,100 children in 22 states were in foster care after their parents were either detained or deported.

The report — based on surveys with child welfare caseworkers, attorneys, judges and immigrants — concludes that immigration officers often refuse to allow parents to make arrangements for their children. Once in ICE custody, parents are often denied access to family court hearings, phones and attorneys. Many don’t even know what happened to their children.

“Once parents are deported, they’re considered fallen off the face of the earth,” said Seth Wessler, the report’s principal investigator. “Family reunification tends to go out the door.” Such separations are enough of a problem that immigration advocates urge parents to prepare kits with children’s passports and medical records or to sign documents allowing others to care for the children.

Three years after Montes came to the U.S., he married a North Carolina native and the couple rented a trailer near Sparta, a town of about 2,000. The marriage made him eligible for legal immigration status, but he never filed.

Drew Jackson, the court-appointed lawyer for the wife, said 31-year-old Marie Montes collects federal disability for a mental illness that prevents her from working. He declined to say what her diagnosis is.“Felipe was the caregiver for the family, the one that supported everybody, made the money and took care of the kids,” Jackson said. “Marie is from a very poor family, and they’re not really in a position to help. Between that and her mental problems, she’s just not in a position to support three children without her husband.”

Felipe Montes’ legal problems began in 2007 when the state passed a law requiring a valid Social Security number to get a driver’s license. Unable to renew his license, Montes said he tried to avoid driving. But he had to get to work. In little more than two years, court records show Montes was cited more than two dozen times for driving with an expired license, an expired registration and without insurance.

In September 2009, a judge sentenced Montes to probation. A year later, he was again detained by immigration agents after reporting for a probation meeting. A month after that, he was put on a plane to Mexico. “They took me away and didn’t let me say goodbye to my wife or to my kids,” Montes said. “They didn’t give me the opportunity to say anything or make any arrangements.”

Two weeks after Montes’ deportation, social workers took the children after his wife’s electricity and heat were cut off. The older boys were sent to live with one foster family, the newborn with another.

John Blevins, director of Alleghany County Department of Social Services, said in a written statement that his agency’s chief mission is to protect children from abuse, but reuniting families is also a priority.But the agency balked at sending the Montes children to live in Mexico, where Montes works at a walnut farm and shares a house with his uncle, aunt and three nieces.

Efforts have shifted to terminating his parental rights — the main barrier to reunification with the children being Montes’ current residence in another country, according to court documents. Legal experts say that once U.S.-born children of immigrants are in the child welfare system, the agencies often refuse to send them to live with deported parents in other countries.

Author: Reynold MasonReynold N. Mason teaches law courses at Zenover Educational Institute In Atlanta, Georgia. He has been a judge on New York City Civil Court and, a Justice on New York State Supreme Court. Mason has been an adjunct professor of law at Medgar Evers College and Monroe College in New York. He has authored several legal opinions published in New York Miscellaneous Reports and New York Official Reports as well as the New York Law Journal. He lives in Atlanta.

Eres (Wednesday 4th of July 2012 04:56:16 AM)..So a few greedy plpoee can destroy 8 million jobs and otherwise wreak havoc on the economy and the lives of countless plpoee, but it’s no big deal because it wasn’t illegal. ..But somebody’s grandma who has been living in the U.S. for 20 years, raised kids, held jobs, goes to church, etc., has to be deported right now because she doesn’t have a green card?What Goldman did is too abstract for some, or more accurately, they are a far away, distant and invisible entity, in the minds of some. It's very easy for the propagandists to twist this dimly understood event around to blame evil libruls, or any target they choose, for these same minds. These same propagandists have for years likewise drummed into mass culture the sancity of business and the glories of making money, and so certainly an entity like Goldman must be innocent.OTOH, most white plpoee have at least an arms-length experience of the other , who may or may not be getting some break the whites are not, and who at the very least are working at jobs that should be going to white plpoee. And they're everywhere. And so they're a much easier to understand and more ubiquitous target for poor whites who can't grasp how they've been fleeced by the real culprits.These same plpoee let their discomfort with the other prevent them from seeing the big picture and connecting the dots. I was eating a few months ago at Souplantation, a regional salad bar chain restaurant in the southwest. I happened to sit next to a guy who started to complain about all the non-English he was hearing all around us. Not getting a sympathetic response from me, he upped the ante by angrily insisting these plpoee are bleeding us dry!! .I didn't have the presence of mind to mount much of a counter argument, but I wanted him to ask him how much he thought his delicious salad would've cost him without the labor of these plpoee he hates.This inability to see the big picture and see the real culprits was writ large in Sarah Palin who famously thought she could snow everyone with her vast foreign policy expertise by remarking that Russia is just next door. This infantile proposition is very similar to those who can't conceive of the crimes committed by Goldman Sachs. They simply are incapable of thinking intelligently about such abstract and remote things. But the brown plpoee next door they can see that, and they react to that.

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